


Cohesion

by beechee



Series: we could be immortals [1]
Category: Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Teambuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-24
Updated: 2015-03-24
Packaged: 2018-03-19 11:21:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3608217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beechee/pseuds/beechee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes Robin time to figure out how to connect to his new teammates.</p><p>(A look at the beginnings of the Teen Titans, with a focus on Robin and Raven's friendship)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cohesion

It takes Robin time to figure out how to connect to his new teammates. In the field, he’s a natural at cohesion: he’s been playing superhero for  _years_ , and he’s worked with any number of people on Batman’s request. Inspirational speeches for when he needs people to trust in him without having to win it, which tone pitched to which volume will rip someone’s attention to him no matter what their situation is, which tones for when it’s time for his team to stand down: these things, he just  _gets_. 

How to build that trust off the field? Which tone indicates friendly curiosity, which insinuates a story that can be coaxed out, how to tone down the air of ruthless efficiency that he works harder than he’d like to admit at projecting and maintaining? These, he fumbles with. 

Eventually, though, he works it out. Beast Boy’s desperate for approval from someone he considers a superior: as the de-facto head of the Teen Titans, Robin qualifies as that superior, and it’s easy enough to invade BB’s space with a casual bump or punch to the arm when he starts to get droopy. Robin cultivates inside jokes with him, and drops them into conversation whenever the intuition tugging at his gut whispers  _now_. 

Cyborg’s technically older than Robin, but the accident robbed him of his confidence. He’s part of the team because he needs the team, and he’s smart enough that Robin mentally assigns him the role of second in command and doesn’t think twice about having him design and build the Tower’s security systems. He needs the boost to his confidence that comes with knowing his teammates (and later, his  _friends_ ) are safe because of him. 

Starfire needs someone to help her work on assimilating into earth culture, and that’s perfect: she and Robin set up a time every other day for walking the neighborhood, half practicing Star’s Human and half on patrol. It’s… nice. He enjoys it. It’s simple. 

Raven, though. Raven’s tough. He’d initially expected her to be the easiest to work out, not a little bit because she reminds him almost of his former mentor, with her silence and her bleakness. He’s wrong, and his initial attempts are all rebuffed. Br—His former mentor had been easily enough drawn out of his quiet, with questions about work, or about the manor, or any other topic Robin could have thought of. Raven, as he learns, considers such questions prying. After about a week and a half, he notices the books she continually has arriving, and decides that maybe  _that_  is where he could get his start. He turns up at her door about four hours after a mission, freshly showered and re-gelled, with a book in hand and what he’ll deny to his dying day is a flutter of anxiety in his stomach.

The door zips open after he knocks, and Raven hovers in the doorway. The room behind her is dim, and the hood of her cloak is up and casting her face into shadow. “What.” She says, when she sees him. It’s not a question, not really, but Robin didn’t get this far in life by getting discouraged easily, so he holds out the book, and says “I noticed you’ve been reading a lot, and I thought of you when I saw this.” Resisting the urge to add more as she takes the book from him, he crosses his arms and slouches outside the doorway. 

He suspects that her expression would be a mystery even if it  _weren’t_  shrouded in shadow, and her tone is as neutral as ever when she asks: “ _The Adventures of The Great Magician Roland_  reminded you of me?”

Okay, so it’s not his best pick. He shrugs, wondering if there’s a way he can backtrack without seeming like a complete idiot. While he’s still thinking desperately, what he can see of her expression shifts into what he  _thinks_  is a smile. “Thanks.” Robin breaks into a legitimate smile, relief almost a tangible thing in his chest. “Sure,” he says, as easily as he knows how. Raven, who usually has no compunctions about ending a conversation when she thinks it’s done, doesn’t trigger the mechanism to shut her door. Instead, she hesitates, and then offers “If you want, we could talk about it when I’m done. Over chess, maybe.” 

If Robin weren’t such a professional, he might have punched the air in victory. Instead, his smile grows into a grin, and he says “Sure!” and only realizes he’s repeated himself about a half hour after he’s left Raven be.

He pauses the video game he’s playing with Beast Boy (part of the ongoing initiative to break him of his habit of calling Robin  _sir_ ) to put his head in his hands and groan. Beast Boy, mildly alarmed, asks “Robin? Are you okay?” And Robin has to wave him off before he can re-bury his face in his hands. “I’m not beating you that badly,” Beast Boy says, after a moment. Puzzlement and concern still linger in his tone, so Robin pulls it together with a single indrawn breath, then says “You’re not going to be beating me at all soon.”

The laugh that prompts from Beast Boy helps quash the embarrassment, and even as Beast Boy’s saying “Oh, yeah?” Robin’s forgetting about it.

And Raven doesn’t seem to remember it at all when she’s done with the book and wants to talk about it. Robin had had to go out and buy a second copy of it, had read it in a single sitting in case Raven did the same, and he gets  _trounced_  at chess, but it’s the first time Raven’s been in the common space for more than fifteen minutes willingly, and so Robin’s still prepared to call it a win. 

**Author's Note:**

> it's been a million years since I posted something and I am so sorry, please take this placeholder drabble and be assured that my current project is over thirty thousand words long


End file.
